Meet "Shrink Rap!"

A warm welcome to the newest psychiatry blog. Drs. Dinah, Clinkshrink, and Roy have created "a cyberplace for psychiatrists to talk." Here's Dr. Dinah:

It was a hard winter. It started even before that, perhaps in October, right before I left to work in Baton Rouge-- one patient had a serious suicide attempt, several were in crisis, even the patients who were fine were having trouble getting out the door at the end of the sessions. "Treatment-Resistant Depression" had become one of my favorite terms, but there were also a few people with mania and psychosis who were having a tough time. So it continued through the winter-- one patient called at least 10 times a day (I finally told her to stop; this improved the quality of my mental health remarkably), another e-mailed, up to 4 times a day, patients called-- or worse, their relatives called-- they cried, sometimes they even sobbed.

I mentioned it to a few colleagues and they all had the same response: My practice, too! One friend told me her emergency phone line usually gets 2 calls a month, now she was getting 3 a day, including calls from a patient on another continent, all while she'd taken on 3 news patients that week and her husband was out-of-town, leaving her with their 2 young children to negotiate. She beat me out for the Most Suffering Psychiatrist award and I brought her chocolate. Something in the air? Yet one more effect of Global Warming?

I felt discouraged, overwhelmed, and I wondered for the first time if I really loved psychiatry as much as I thought...

How did things begin to turn around? She tells us, here. Go, read!